I’m an entrepreneur based in LA and recently moved from a house with a Tesla charger to an apartment in WeHo without a charging station.

I’ve realized there’s a large gap for fast charging in the West LA area. There’s only one Supercharger in WeHo (plans to build a second but unclear on timeline).

I’m curious what the viability is to set up a new fast charging station. I’m still in the research phase (talking EV Box to get a better understanding of startup costs etc) but curious if anyone here has first hand experience.

This area is very underserved - many apartments tons of Tesla & EVs.

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  • odd84@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Give ChargePoint a call. That’s their whole business, helping private businesses/individuals become hosts for charging stations, and then handling the software/billing/services aspect of it for you after the install. Financially there’s no ROI, no fast charging network is profitable. The upfront costs are too great and paid utilization too low.

      • odd84@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        I can imagine. The local McDonalds franchise group here has solar awnings over their parking lots, and ChargePoint L2 stations at each restaurant. But the ChargePoint stations can’t actually be used because they stopped paying for the subscription. It says as much on their screen (something like “service inactive, 0 courtesy charges remaining”, I don’t remember exactly). It must be expensive for the owner to have decided at some point to cancel after investing so much in the fancy solar-powered shaded stations.